For a large part of your life, it seems like the most important things are grades, GPA, test scores, and getting into the best schools. It’s a lot to handle for anyone, but especially for teens and young adults who are still just trying to figure out who they are. Throughout high school, I was a straight-A student who felt like good grades came easily to me. Of course I challenged myself with AP and Honors courses, but once I got to college it was all pretty different, and I know a lot of other students can relate.
The change from acing high school classes to struggling through college classes was quite a shock, and I found myself constantly worrying, and still to this day, that maybe I’m just not good enough. I know that there are a lot of students who face this harsh awakening when they start university, and it’s absolutely normal to suddenly feel like you have to put in a lot more effort to do well.
There’s so much emphasis put on succeeding academically and how that success is crucial to getting the perfect job down the road. I’m here to tell you that your academic failures do not define you. You are still just as smart and just as worthy as you thought you were before, but maybe it’s a little harder now to show it. You might get a C for the first time, or fail an assignment, a test, or even a whole class. But college is about so much more than getting perfect grades.
When you go off to college, whether it’s a local community college or a big university far from home, you learn so much that isn’t taught from your textbooks. You learn how to deal with difficult professors, how to socialize with new people and form more adult friendships; you learn about what your real passions are, and how to turn those into a reality. There are dozens and dozens of experiences that have nothing to do with academics, and yes, even partying is a valuable experience that you get from college.
For a lot of people, college is the first time you’ve ever been on your own and away from the safe bubble of your hometown. Learning this independence is almost more important than some of the classes you’ll take, because it helps form you into the adult you’re going to be. (See my blog on why college isn’t necessarily the best four years.)
All of this is to say that you can’t beat yourself up for not being perfect anymore. I barely scraped by in my college chemistry classes, earning my first C’s I’d ever gotten, and I ended up okay. My sophomore fall was a really difficult time for me personally, so my grades suffered yet again, but I survived and moved on.
I took this one very difficult course, Intro to Systemic and Respiratory Physiology, and took notes and studied just like I would have for all of my other courses, but after two exams, I was almost failing and decided to withdrawal from the class (to be fair, I spoke with the professor about how to do better, and he actually suggested that I withdrawal and try again the next semester). So I took the class again and did everything possible to buckle down and study, including a lot of all-nighters, a lot of re-writing and memorizing notes, and a lot of crying from stress. And just when I thought I was doing okay, I failed the class. After a semester abroad, I came back and took the class AGAIN, and put in even more work and even more effort, and FAILED. I failed the class a SECOND TIME. After I had already withdrawn once. So, for a fourth time, I enrolled in the course and was DETERMINED to pass. I studied harder than I ever had studied before, and I eventually passed.
What I learned from that was that sometimes there are going to be roadblocks and hardships that you just can’t avoid. The professor was harsh, his exams seemed impossible, and he was the only one who taught the course. The failure and re-taking rate for that class was honestly astronomical, and I discovered that almost half of the students that I talked to who had taken the class had to take it more than once. And I guess we all learned the same lesson and came out on the other side stronger students than before.
I had a few more academic failures that I had to make up for with an online class and in-person lab hours, but I finally completed my degree and I’m a better student because of it. I’ve definitely struggled with the emotional and mental aspect of not feeling good enough or smart enough, and it’s easy to get bogged down by that. I could’ve changed majors and gone down a different path that was easier, but I didn’t want to do anything else. I didn’t let my failures define me and I kept going. I set my sights on graduate school, even with my less-than-perfect transcript and mediocre GPA.
I was accepted into the University of Miami graduate nutrition program but ultimately declined (because it’s not an accredited program, which I needed), and took a bit of a gap year, during which I buckled down and took Organic Chemistry and Microbiology online to count as prerequisites for my next goal: graduate school at Hunter College in New York City. Because of my past failures, my acceptance is kind of not traditional, and I’m on a bit of a trial period for the first two semesters.
As embarrassing as it is for me, I wanted to share my story so that it doesn’t seem so scary to other people when or if it happens. I wanted to show that I’ve failed A LOT, and I’m still working as hard as possible to succeed.
What I’m trying to get across here is that failing in life is inevitable. Failing in school can happen, and it happens often. It’s important to keep going and keep trying your hardest. You are more than your failures and more than your struggles, and sometimes it can feel like your failures are written all over you for everyone to see, but they aren’t. Failing means that you’re challenging yourself, so keep going because challenging yourself is the only way to grow. Your academic failures DO NOT DEFINE YOU, as long as you don’t let them.
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